The former Wagner College assistant was perfectly happy working as the offensive line coach at the University of San Diego, still cutting his teeth at teaching the game he began playing as a kid back home in Pennsylvania.

One morning he decided to pick up the phone and touch base with a guy he played for at UCLA.

Keith CarterFile Photo

Tom Cable was the offensive coordinator for the Bruins in the early 2000s. Carter was a tight end and sometime fullback in Cable’s system prior to a motorcycle accident that shortened his college career.

By the time Carter decided to pick up the phone, Cable was in the NFL, an assistant with the Seattle Seahawks.

“He thought I was calling about a job-opening the Seahawks had,” Carter said Friday morning from the Seahawks’ hotel in Jersey City. “I didn’t even know there was a job.”

When the conversation ended, Cable told his former player, “I’m going to put you on the list.”

The kid who worked as a grad assistant in the Wagner program in 2006-07 — living with a couple of other oversized football types in a small Howard Avenue two-bedroom apartment outfitted with some leftover dorm furniture and a consistently empty refrigerator — had no idea what Cable meant. 

SURPRISE INTERVIEW 

A couple of months later, on a Wednesday morning, he got a call.

Could he fly up to Seattle on Thursday to meet with Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll about the offensive quality control coaching position?

Could he?

You bet!

Hey, no plane necessary.

“I was real nervous,” Carter said. “But it all happened so quickly that I basically got ready for the interview on the plane ride. I just tried to get my thoughts down.”

Then he met the charismatic Carroll, who has turned the Seahawks into a powerhouse in his four years, building the best defense in the league from the ground up, and a young, explosive offense anchored by running back Marshawn Lynch.

“I got into his office, and Coach was so laid back and easy to talk to that it was like sitting around having a regular conversation,” said Carter, who was hired that week in February of 2012 and has been at the job ever since for the team that meets the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII Sunday afternoon. “He really just wants to know what kind of person you are.”

Carter went to work the following Monday and hasn’t slowed down since.

Being quality control coach is something like working on a doctorate, but with plenty of hands-on experience.

Carter helps prepare the daily meetings, sits with the offensive coaches when they draw up the run-game playbook for each individual game, and works with the other coaches on the drills and the teaching during on-field practice.

“And whatever else they invite me in to be a part of,” he said.

As a first-timer in the pro game, there have been some surprises over the last two seasons.

Like the Carroll approach in general, which is more the West Coast version of what fans think of as the boot-camp mentality of the NFL. 

FRESH PERSPECTIVE 

“It wasn’t the strict, tough-guy stuff, that I thought it might be,” said Carter of his first weeks in the job. “That’s what’s so cool about the way Coach Carroll does it. Our practices are hard, fast and competitive, but short. And when we had our bye week, basically the players got the whole week off to relax.”

The second-year assistant has also been pleasantly surprised by the reaction of veteran players to a young coach, untested in the ways of the league.

“It’s been great to see how down-to-earth the players are, and how willing the guys are to listen to someone if they trust them,” he said.

Newly-named Wagner offensive coordinator Jason Houghtaling was one of the young assistants stuffed with Carter into that apartment on Howard Avenue during the ‘06-07 seasons.

And he isn’t surprised by much his old roommate has accomplished.

“Keith always had a great philosophy and core beliefs as a football coach,” said Houghtaling, who visited with Carter during Super Bowl week. “He’s always talked about not wasting a moment on the field and working constantly at improving. That’s the kind of stuff he’s about, and now he’s getting a chance to do it at the highest level.”

While all the discussions about philosophies and the teaching aspect of the job are undoubtedly important and valid, there is still something almost magical about a 31-year-old helping to prepare a team to play in the biggest game of the year in front of 100,000,000 viewers, and doing so just a couple of seasons removed from being an unknown college assistant at a mid-sized program in a non football-centric town like San Diego.

In effect, he’s already won his Super Bowl.

“It really is like living a dream,” Carter said Friday.

Makes you want to pick up the phone and begin making some calls to old connections, doesn’t it? 